The music has stopped but the chairs are still empty

Three chairs in the park - Paris 2010

 

So the mating ritual has begun but it seems we are unable to attract a mate - the ongoing sale of the practice seems to have come to a halt with the prospective purchasers not even interested in a sly fumble during the erection selection at the end of the night. Of course they could just be, in the words of the knights in Monty Python and The Holy Grail, simply running away in an attempt to confuse us, to lure us into a false sense of security and then run from their north west London lair armed with a bundle of contracts that need signing. It's looking about as likely as a certain West London football club owner running towards Rafa Benitez with the keys to his safe at the moment, we've heard nothing since the first meeting a fortnight ago, zip, zilch, nada.

The funny thing is though that this slow down in the courting process has made people think through a few things that were glaringly obvious to some of us and on a wider scale is something that has caused me concern in the past. When you buy a business you carry out 'due diligence' this is something I have done for clients and something that possible purchasers have done on my clients but you rarely if ever see the vendor carry out the same level of checks on the purchaser. This is a shame because I have seen more than one successful business flounder within weeks of a new owner taking over simply because they misunderstood the way that their new company operated, didn't understand the client base and certainly didn't understand the dynamics of the day to day running of the business. Many new owners simply see the new operation as a 'bolt on' to their turnover, think they can sit back and watch the money roll in without taking much of an active role. You only have to look at the concerns there are among football fans over foreign owners, and it has to be said some British owners, taking over clubs without anybody questioning their fit and proper credentials. It should be mandatory where business transfers are over a certain value for their to be checks, after all you wouldn't buy a house without a surveyors report or a car without a warranty so why shouldn't business sales be a two way street?

Anyway after this brief period of torpor who knows, perhaps tomorrow the call will come through and everything will be decided one way or another.